Breath & Anxiety, One Person, and How to Ease Your Troubles

1. Breathing Helps with Anxiety: a Meta-Analysis

“Anxious individuals who are unable to withstand the anxiety that accompanies the possibility of something bad happening in the future may experience respiratory interventions as a means by which to control their physiology. This may generalize to a greater sense of anxiety control and self-efficacy in managing symptoms.”

- Leyro et al. (2021)

This meta-analysis found that breathing significantly improves anxiety, both immediately and over the long term, providing effects similar to the gold-standard treatment of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Check out the paper here or sign up for the Breath Learning Center to get my review and takeaways 🙏

2. It Takes Just One Person (each of us)

“Pressure is contagious, but so is good will. Just one person slowing down, one person not putting others under pressure, helps everyone else to relax too.”

- Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time

Here’s a great reminder that when we use slow breathing, meditation, and other contemplative practices to slow down, we help those around us relax, too 🙏

3. The Effects of Focused Attention on the Body & Mind

“When one-pointed attention is strong, the nervous system kicks into a relaxed mode. Heart rate slows, metabolic rate declines, digestion picks up, and brain activity associated with worry and agitation goes into neutral. It was a major surprise for Western scientists to find that something as simple as concentration could have such profound effects on the body.”

- Mark Epstein, MD, Advice Not Given

👏👏👏

4. How to Ease Your Own Troubles

“Sharing another person’s feelings of distress need not be a downer. As Dr. Aaron Beck…has said, when you focus on someone else’s suffering, you forget your own troubles.”

— Daniel Goleman, Ph.D. & Richard Davidson, Ph.D.

"In addition, the mental component of breath is a sense of rhythmic expansion and contraction. And I think that connects us to every other living thing because all living organisms breathe. So that same rhythm is at the center of the heart of all life."

— — Andrew Weil, MD

Category: The Nose

Answer: The bone & cartilage separating your two nostrils (which sometimes gets displaced) is called this.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is the nasal septum?

In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”

P.S. beyond meditation

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